1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to diet control. More specifically, to a system and a method of electronically collecting and recording personalized nutritional consumption data of the type of concern in diet control when foods and drinks are purchased at food store check-out counters.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The word diet has two most commonly used definitions related to foods. First, it is the usual food or drink of a person or an animal. Second, it is a regulated selection of foods, especially as prescribed for gaining or loosing weight or for other medical reasons. During the last several years, the process of dieting to loose weight is being discovered to be the most ineffective and needlessly expensive of all human experiences. After depravation and discipline for days, weeks, and even months to achieve a goal, dieters are often seen gaining back all that they lost within a short period of time. Many dieters put themselves through this process regularly. Each time quickly returning where they had started, and each time trying a new diet cure available on the market. Invariably, the cost of this perpetual circle of disappointment is more than just monetary. Many times their real cost is a person's mental and physical health.
In most cases, the remedy offered by a "fad" diet is depravation. This is why most diets do not work. A person deprived of food for the duration of the diet naturally thinks of eating when it is finally over. The answer to weight control lies in having the right diet, the right amount of exercise, focusing on fat (not weight), and never going hungry (without depravation).
There is no ideal diet that could possibly meet the varying food needs of a population that has so many different ages, body sizes, physical activities, and health problems. However, practical guidelines based on scientific research are offered by the United States Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services. These guidelines are accepted by the mainstream medical community as sound advice for good nutrition. These are: (1) eat a variety of foods. (2) Eat foods high in starch and fiber. (3) Avoid too much fat, saturated fat and cholesterol. (4) Reduce sugar intake. (5) Reduce salt intake. (6) Maintain ideal weight. (7) If you drink alcohol, do so in moderation.
Eating right is important not just for weight control, but also for maintaining a healthy body. Increasingly, research is showing that diet affects how likely one is to develop certain diseases. Along with smoking and high blood pressure, high levels of cholesterol in the blood has been accepted as a major risk factor for heart disease. Eating too much rich, fat food increases the incidence of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diseases associated with obesity (including diabetes, gout, osteoarthritis, gallbladder disease and high blood pressure).
It is clear that a healthy diet should emphasize real, wholesome, and unprocessed foods. These are the foods that are generally high in nutrients and dietary fiber and low in sugar, salt, fat, and cholesterol. The best way to assure a healthy diet is to keep overall fat, sugar, salt, and cholesterol content of foods and drinks purchased below certain levels, and to keep such beneficial foods as dietary fibers, carbohydrates, and iron-rich foods above certain levels. However, this is a very difficult and time consuming task. It requires a knowledge of the nutritional content of items being purchased and an ability to quickly create per capita daily averages for selected nutrients for pre-selected time periods such as latest purchase, latest week, and year to date. No prior art provides such data, simply because it is a very time consuming process to keep such records. On the other hand, the question remains: how does one know if he or she is following a low fat, low cholesterol diet, or is missing out on some beneficial nutrients? Similarly, how can a diabetic person know of his/her total or average daily sugar intake from the foods he/she consumes?
This invention provides a simple and effective answer to the above questions. The system provided requires little or no time expenditure on the pan of the consumer. Nutritional data are provided electronically and automatically to the consumer at check-out counters when foods and drinks are purchased. Moreover, each family or individual can be provided with nutritional data automatically averaged over selected time periods such as latest purchase, latest week, latest month, and year to date, etc.